Swede gets 10 years for rape over internet

Coerced girls in Canada to perform sex acts

At home in Ontario and Alberta, the two young Canadian girls felt they had no choice: perform sexual acts on camera — in one case involving a pet dog — or face terrible consequences.

They were convinced a man they met online would hurt them or their families or humiliate them over the internet if they failed to do his bidding. What they didn’t know was that their tormentor was on another continent.

But on Thursday, that Swedish man was convicted of raping and sexually assaulting the girls in Canada and others in two other foreign countries entirely over the internet, a unique prosecution that involved no physical contact between the assailant and his victims.

Bjorn Samstrom, 41, was sentenced in Uppsala Thursday to 10 years in prison — Sweden’s stiffest sex-crime penalty — after forcing 27 teenagers here, in Scotland and the United States to perform sex acts on camera.

The prosecution in Uppsala City Court challenged the traditional definition of rape and sexual assault in an age where the internet has become a powerful tool for predators. It was unprecedented in Sweden and, experts here say, has never been tried in Canada.

“It sends a message, a clear message that this is possible, and you can get 10 years for it,” said Annika Wennerstrom, one of the prosecutors overseeing the case. “It sends a signal to … the children, as well, who are out there and now realize, ‘I’ve been raped. I had no idea. I thought I did this to myself.’ This is a crime that society takes very seriously.”

Still, she said the prosecution would have preferred a stronger decision and will likely appeal the verdict — contained in a 150-page ruling by a judge and three lay adjudicators. The court convicted Samstrom of aggravated rape in four cases that involved animals or other children, rape in one of the other cases, and aggravated sexual assault or sexual coercion in the remainder.

Rape in Swedish law can include intercourse, or a violation of sexual integrity considered equally severe. Samstrom met his victims through online social networks, then made them take off their clothes and penetrate themselves with fingers or objects, threatening either to kill them and their families, or post their profile photos on pornography websites.

That should be considered rape, Wennerstrom said.

“These girls are performing penetrations for a very long time and it hurts and they’re sad and they are very young and it still doesn’t count as a rape,” she said. “From their perspective, the perpetrator is present in the room with them, because they can hear his voice and he’s writing to them and instructing them . ... They are traumatized in the same way.”

The victims included one girl each from Ontario and Alberta, aged between 13 and 15 and targeted in 2015. They were identified and interviewed by the RCMP on behalf of Swedish authorities, with video recordings of their testimony played in court.

In one of the instances, the family’s pet dog “had to perform on her, and she had to perform on the dog as well,” the prosecutor said.

A similar prosecution would be impossible in Canada, where the sexual assault law requires there to be actual physical contact, said Daniel Brown, a Toronto defence lawyer who co-authored the book “Prosecuting and Defending Sexual Offences Cases.”

But the Criminal Code has already been changing to reflect new technology, so it could happen some day, he said.

Such crimes have been prosecuted here in other ways. In a similar Canadian case in 2008, a Kingston, Ont., man was convicted of blackmailing several girls to perform sex acts over the internet. He was found guilty of several offences — including child-pornography offences, extortion and inciting a child to perform bestiality — but not actual sexual assault.

Mark Bedford, 23 at the time, was sentenced to three years in prison.